If you are pregnant and soon you will have your first baby, congratulations, I hope everything goes well and that you can soon hug your first son or daughter. You will have a thousand doubts and surely you will ask hundreds of questions to those who are already parents, to your mother and even to health professionals, who will gladly help you do better in your newly released role as a mother (and in the case of parents, because in their newly released role as father, they also count and also have doubts).
The fact is that you will listen to the first advice you receive and maybe someone will tell you that what you do is not correct, or you may seek a second opinion and see that what they tell you is totally opposite to what someone else told you. Come on, the pediatrician will tell you to do it differently than your mother told you. And at the same time, your friend who already has two children will tell you to do it in a different way than the pediatrician told you. And there you will be, in no man's land, without knowing which way to go because babies do not carry an instruction manual. Or maybe yes?
"Is that each one says a different thing"
I don't even know how many times this phrase will have been told to me: "It's just that now you tell me this and you're all driving me crazy, because everyone says something different", and rightly so, because it's not just that I say it is different from what the grandmother says, or the other grandmother, is that sometimes what I say is different from what the pediatrician says, or another nurse.
So thanks to the free advice and thanks to the fact that mothers and fathers have doubts we have a lot of babies receiving very different care based on totally opposite advice, and the most curious thing is that the same baby a few days receives a type of care and other days he receives others, because his parents have heard a different advice that they decide to try.
But basically, the tips are not necessary
I notice, if you ask, you will receive a lot of opposing advice. Some will tell you not to hold him in arms, others do. Some will say that after 6 months breast milk is almost water and others will say that it is advisable to breastfeed for at least two years. Some will say that the child cries because he has colic and you have to give him chamomile and others will say that it is because you have become accustomed to his arms and have to leave him alone in his crib. And so with everything, because as babies do not speak and express everything in the same way, crying, the interpretation of their complaints and discomforts is free. Some think they need one thing and others think they need another.
But on the bottom, the tips are not necessary Because babies do have an instruction manual. Publishers are getting used to publishing books and manuals for babies with titles as diverse as "Baby instruction manual", "How to be a mother and not die trying", "How to be a good father despite being a rookie" and many parents they buy them (or we buy, that I have some at home) thinking that they will help us along the way. And it is not that they do not, because they give many useful clues, but they are not really necessary because the answers to all the questions have the baby.
No two babies are alike, although it is true that they tend to behave in a similar way and more or less you can point out what would be the ideal standard method of care. Now, a standard leaves out babies who have different or more intense needs, and that is where something can fail. That is why the important thing is not the advice that someone can give you, but to see if it is applicable or not to what your son tells you.
If you follow an advice and it is not going well, it does not solve anything or something is getting worse, it is not the baby who has the problem, or it is not a matter of having to persevere, it is that the advice is wrong. In the end, the best method to care for and raise a baby is trial and error. Try something, if it goes well, go ahead. If it goes wrong, you discard it and move on to the next possible solution. This is how the baby is letting us know what he needs and what he doesn't, what he likes and what not and where we are getting it right and where it fails.
Don't listen to anyone, more than your baby
That is why when a mother tells me that "is that you tell me something different," I say that as long as the babies do not speak, as long as they do not tell us in our language what they want, we will all continue to interpret their needs and we will never say the same. And then I clarify that you should listen less to others and try to listen more to the baby and listen more to yourself. When you listen to the baby and pay attention to what you feel, what comes out, you don't usually make mistakes.
To be a mother and father is to start a relationship with the baby, a dependency relationship in which the child is so unable to do anything that he needs his parents for everything, but to express to them at all times what he needs he can only do two things: complain or stay calm. If you complain, you go wrong. If you remain calm or calm down with something you are doing, you are doing well. It has no more mystery.
A track
And just in case with everything I have said, you have not just seen where to throw, I give you a hint as a father and a nurse: put yourself in your baby's place. Try to think about what you may need and try to understand him. That helps us not to despair, especially when we have a child who needs a lot, they ask for a lot, they are very intense and we are a little desperate for the "I don't know what's wrong with you" thing.
We must understand that they are babies of a few days, that they have just arrived in the world, that they are completely lost, that they have the only mission to survive and that, for this, at the minimum that they suspect that they are not well they will complain, that they need affection and affection because they know that they will be safe, that they only know mom, for having spent nine months with her, and that little by little they will allow contact with dad and other people, who have been receiving food 24 hours a day through the placenta and the umbilical cord and now they spend quite a few moments without it, but sometimes they want the same thing and suck so much that it seems that some shots are joined with the others and a long etcetera.
It is hard to have a baby, it is hard to raise him because they are very demanding, but everything has a why and It becomes a little more bearable when we understand your needs and we began, little by little, to understand each other with him.
